Sundancer
Always drifting~
- Location
- Germany
Now, this is of course open to interpretation. How one see's Ling Qi, her driving forces and motivation. It also has the potential to be quite nuanced but I will try not to throw a wall of text out and limit myself to aspects relevant to the current vote.
In my view, one of Ling Qi's primary motivations is the drive to better herself and make up for her past misdeeds, as questionable as her 'guilt' might be in these cases. She wants to see a better world, and strive for something better than fighting in the dirt for scrabs. That is one of her core motivations, and has been present multiple times in the quest. Be it the spirit during Zhou's test that brought these thoughts to the forefront, as well as being referred to multiple times later. If only simply by half-ironically thinking of herself as a "greedy, selfish girl".
She also wants to be free, unrestrained by others and not be pushed around and bullied by those stronger than her. Over time this has evolved to accepting voluntary bonds with close people and being restricted by those despite her desire for freedom.
Strength, personal power, admiration and respect from others is something nice to have for Ling Qi, even if the later two are still somewhat bewildering for her. They are not primary motivation. Ling Qi doesn't crave strength by itself, but she craves the security strength gives.
She doesn't care much for riches, still being unused to her newly gained wealth. In an abstract sense, she is thankful for the good fortunes she had and the Cultivation aids she could use because of them. It is not very present on her mind, though. Maybe because of some part of 'arrogance' due to her relatively high talent and that she stumbled into these good fortune encounters almost regularly.
From my reading of Ling Qi's talks with Renxiang and her ponderings and talks about the offer with others, Ling Qi herself does not seem to have paid much attention to the material wealth Renxiang had to offer. Or the opportunities for superior Cultivation aids a vassalization might imply.
Thus I believe the currently leading votes are placing too much emphasis on these aspects and too little on what we saw of Ling Qi's own ponderings. Admittedly, we don't get too clear a picture of those given that we are basically in Ling Qi's head, and it is quite possible that she basically agreed with the thread on the material wealth aspects and opportunities. I don't find it particularly likely, though.
To me, it seems much more as if Ling Qi was motivated by personal loyalty, trust and the ability to believe in what Cai Renxiang stands for. Ling Qi didn't just want to give an empty vow and get a lot of goodies in return, she wanted something to believe in and someone she can accept as a person. She didn't want to give her loyalty to a person in who's ideals she can't believe, whom she can't back fully. Ling Qi very much wants a personal connection, not simply a 'boss' she 'works' for.
This also brings me to her second motivation for choosing Cai Renxiang. Personal freedom, this time expressed in a short chain of command. Ling Qi believes she can stomach taking orders from Cai Renxiang. I believe she is a lot less sure that she could take orders from some random Count or Marquis if she were placed under a Viscount as in the usual imperial noble hierarchy. 'Serving' directly under Cai Renxiang means there are few if any outside of Renxiang or Shenhua herself who would give her orders. The later is unlikely to do so most of the time.
Thirdly, Ling Qi's desire to find or build a proper home or to establish roots played a role in her accepting Renxiang's offer. While that is also something she could have done in the Gu route, the whole marriage deal creped her out too much, no matter how well her prospective groom presented himself. So Renxiang was the more 'safer' option to establish her home. (On that note, this is about establishing a home and less about a fief. Despite the threads ponderings, the fief isn't yet a major consideration or focus of Ling Qi.)
This is just my interpretation and Yrsillar's intent or someone's else interpretation might differ. But I don't think many of the current vote options represent this all that well. PrimalShadow's is probably pretty close, but it's open to interpretation and how you read the wording. I take particular issue with Kai Merah's focus on "material gains" though, but again. That's just me.
... and I wrote a wall of text anyway. Sorry about that, but I can't help it ;-/
